Yeah, look what it did to Henry Fonda! He got so drunk on it one night that he ran off and shacked up with the chambermaid for the night. Of course, he was aghast when he woke up the next morning and hastily beat a retreat, covered with embarassment. He never acknowledged the girl, even though it later turned out she was pregnant as a result of the liaison.

She gave birth to a boy, but gave up on trying to get Henry to take responsibility, settling for some payoff or other to forget about it, and she moved up to a small coastal town in Oregon and raised the lad --whonm she had named Hargrove, after her own father--as a single mom for years. Finally when he was about nine, he asked his mother where he had come from, and she had to face the big question of how much to tell him.

The Star-Telegram had a story about absinthe being reintroduced in the U.S. after nearly 100 years of being banned. I can't say that particular green drink has much appeal. Anyone who saw Madam X knows better than to tread that path!

An' shure an' begorra, Mom, set down an' have a jar o' green Guinness with a plate o' corned beef an' cabbage an' sellybrate the day o' the good Saint Paddy, he who driv all of the snakes an' toads outa Oireland.

Or celebrate in the traditional Irish fashion and beat up an Englishman.

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floorÑ And this, and so much more?Ñ It is impossible to say just what IS BS! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a thread: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, said with shaking head, ÒThat is not BS at all, That is not what I call BS, at all.Ó

My knee hurts. The MRI tech said that "nothing leaps out at me" but a radiologist will read the pictures and on Wednesday morning I'll know. I suspect surgery is in my future; I've had knee surgery before and I'll schedule this one for a Thursday and be back to work on Monday. It will, I'm sure, interfere with my planned trip to Ireland beginning in mid-May.

In brief, I'm getting along about as I have been. Just a bit down because I don't know the future. Of course, I have a Board meeting Tuesday, an Executive Staff Meeting Tuesday, the boner on Wednesday morning, a meeting with an environmental engineer on Wednesday afternoon, and we just got six inches of unpredicted snow in about two and half hours. The last all by itself is a real downer.

The air is still; the wind has turned And quieted. The clouds are gone and summer's warmth untimely Licks the river in the fading light. This is the calm when leaves roll over And dogs become unsteady, Cats go off by themselves, And even hydrants seem the wrong colors. Just as the still is settling down In the long evening twiligt, A creak and click are felt, Not known but understood as Ancestors are understood. Then, in a timing down of the world's Best chaps Then i the storm unleashed That sears the eyes in the shine And of BS again Makes a godhead in the night.

Aloysius Prendergast De VereRattled in Cages Known to None Waterside Publications Lesser American Poets Series Chicago, 1957

I am reminded of an interesting book I read recently called "Influence", a study of some of the trigger-response mechanisms which veteran sales people and other persuaders and manipulators learn to use in order to gain compliance from customers, or voters, or whatever.

Damn. Just wiped out this comment. I'll try again.

I was rather appalled when the salesman for a roofing company that was bidding on the work on my roof mistook a question of mine and started making bigoted remarks about the mixed-race neighborhood just across the creek. I'm on the south side next to the bridge, and though it is an artificial barrier and the races are mixed on both sides, the size of houses and yards make the neighborhoods distinctly different. He seemed conspiratorial, as if a shared bigotry would get him the business. (It didn't, I hired a Mexican roofer directly, without the middle man.)